


a love like an anagram

by hystericalcherries, njckle



Series: Triangular Theory of Love [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings Realization, Frenemies, M/M, POV Derek "Nursey" Nurse, Poet Derek "Nursey" Nurse, Post Haus 2.0, The D-Men Bond is Sacred and Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28605123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hystericalcherries/pseuds/hystericalcherries, https://archiveofourown.org/users/njckle/pseuds/njckle
Summary: Dex cracks first because he’s always the one who does. "So, are you going to say it or should I?""Say what?"Dex nails him in the shoulder. "You know what."Derek thinks he might. He manages to squeeze in the last of his books on the bottom shelf of his newly gifted bookcase and leans back to survey the entire thing. It's a perfect fit, but he knew it would be. "You don't hate me.""I actually don't," Dex says and there's a hint of wonder in his voice.(Or, Nursey and Dex realize that they might maybe more than tolerate each other.)
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Series: Triangular Theory of Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096067
Comments: 9
Kudos: 145





	a love like an anagram

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Armor's song, _Catastrophic_. You can check out the song and our nurseydex playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63d0Y3lCIie1jpdhM6VHQL?si=25qyiObLTH-gzKq7YK4K5w)!

If Derek let every loud, white boy get to him, he would’ve lost his mind back at Andover. 

He’s had practice dealing with ludicrous people, has had his share of fun with riling them up and laughing at their ridiculous opinions, and Dex is such a predictable case that he spends all of freshmen year purposefully rubbing his liberal-LGBT-friendly-big-government hands on every small town ideal he spouts. Their conversations (read: arguments) run almost like clockwork, following the same pattern of every single other talk Derek’s heard from every other idiot step-by-step. It's a constant among constants, fighting a fight that never ends and trying to push someone who doesn't want to move. But it does become something close to manageable during sophomore year, blurring somewhere between aggressively polite and begrudgingly friendly; despite their differences, they find common ground on the ice, throwing under-the-belt compliments in the form of chirps that have Derek thinking that maybe things will get better between them.

They don't.

Things get worse when junior year rolls around and it's three months of not-so-passive fights, followed almost immediately by a blow-out that reaches proportions of the likes that the Haus has never seen. Then Dex’s stuff is moved from their—Derek’s—room in a day and it feels like a victory, sweet in the way he wakes up every morning after without the annoying clatter of a keyboard to greet him.

It's not a big deal, Dex moving out, at least not to Derek, and Dex doesn't act any more aggressive than usual, so Derek figures he prefers this setup too. They both go on like usual, sans sharing a space, and it works. They argue less and from what he’s heard from Ford and the rest of the guys, it’s turning out for the best because Dex is using his handyman skills to turn the basement around. They still play together on the ice and yeah, they don't see each other as often or hang out unless Chowder's there to be the buffer, but it's fine—they're fine.

So fine that during breakfast two weeks later Derek makes the conscious choice to throw himself in the chair next to his fellow d-man, purposefully oblivious to the apprehensive look Tango and Hops give them before hastily clearing their plates and all but launching themselves out the kitchen. Instead, he starts to pile his plate with fluffy pancakes and the perfectly scrambled eggs Bitty had made them, making sure his elbow accidentally bumps into Dex's as he's about to take a bite.

“You know," he starts, just to be a dick. "I knew you’d be the first to cave."

Dex glowers at him over his own breakfast, unaware of the smudge of ketchup that clings to the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know how your dorm roommate didn’t run out on you.” He doesn't say anything about the bet and how he definitely lost it, but Derek is nothing if not humble so he lets it go with a silent promise to bring it up again at practice that afternoon. "Must've not had a sense of smell or any kind of awareness for the dump you two were living in."

“Never had a roommate.” He shoves a mini-pancake in his mouth and chews loudly in a way he knows Dex will hate.

“Of course you didn’t.” Dex’s mouth twists in disgust at his eating and pointedly turns to his phone. “I don’t think you could keep one if you tried.”

Now that’s a little bit offensive. “Chill!”

“Boys,” Bitty warns from the other end of the table, not looking up from his own phone. "Play nice."

Derek ducks his head a bit in a show of practiced deference, only to raise it once more so he can glare at his ginger counterpart. "I can play nice just fine. It's Dex who's a sore loser."

"Whatever you say, Nurse."

And that’s a surprise because usually Dex rises up to his challenges and to have him not leaves Derek fumbling; he had a comeback ready for whatever he’d say and then for the one after that, but now the loop is broken.

“Yeah, well, you've got ketchup all over your face,” he says eventually because he has to have the last word. Then, while the other goes to wipe the wrong side of his face, he's picking up his unfinished plate and dumping it in the sink, socks quiet against the wood floors as he makes his way back to his room. Alone.

But it's fine. Totally fine.

* * *

It’s not fine actually and it takes a whopping three and a half weeks for either of them to acknowledge it.

* * *

Derek’s plaster cast is finally off, arm carefully wrapped in gauze and in a sling, with very specific instructions from the team’s physician to not “fuck himself up anymore or so help me, Nurse, I will break you.”

Or no, that was Dex.

God, the amount of classic white boy anger that spews out of that dude's mouth is nonstop, like he can't even comprehend the necessary emotions for situations that require finesse and kindness. Threatening someone who’s been benched for most of the season and acting like this whole situation was what Derek wanted is not only stupid, but a dick move. Half the time Derek assumes it's to fulfill some unconscious desire to control everything, like everything will fall into place if Dex berates everyone around him. He's not fooling anyone. It's not like he needs to do all this for dibs anymore or to suck up to Bitty for jam recipes. Honestly, he doesn’t get the guy—not one bit.

In fact, he once heard him describe himself as a “normal guy,” which is total bullshit because no normal person is that much of a neat freak or throws that big of a tantrum over the littlest of spills. If Dex was normal, he would’ve stayed clear of the Samwell hockey team to preserve his small town views.

Okay, maybe Derek is mulling over this thing he has with Dex way more than his cool persona should, but it’s— _so frustrating_. Their relationship isn’t the most perfect, Derek knows, and he’s already made his peace that they’ll never be Holster and Ransom, but he can’t help but admit that he’s a bit butthurt that they can’t even seem to tolerate each other. It’s not at all what he imagined when he first signed onto the team.

“It’s just… really unchill,” he tells Chowder the third time their ginger teammate leaves lunch hall just as Derek arrives. The whole thing is so obvious half the team has noticed. “The dude won’t even look me in the eye anymore, unless it’s to grouch or criticize me—or both.”

So they disagreed on a lot of things and argued instead of listening to one another more often than naught, at least that was better than what they were now. It was more exciting than the cold shoulder act Dex had decided to enact, limiting contact and conversation so that when they did find themselves a minor moment to cooperate it was stilted and awkward. Even the occasional praise for a sweet play was gone and while Derek wasn't going to admit that he missed the old, wayward habits they created, he would admit that he did wonder when the d-man bond would finally run out of magic. 

“Yeah, he’s been pretty harsh lately.” Chowder wrings his hands nervously. “I hate to see you guys so upset. I can talk to him, or maybe have Bitty do it. Dex always listens to Bitty, so that might smooth things over.”

“That’d be great if there was anything to talk about. But there isn’t. What am I gonna say? ‘Hey Bitty, Dex is being mean to me and won’t hang out with me anymore?’" He throws out his hands with a groan. “No, I’m not gonna involve him. He’s already got a lot to worry about, what with his thesis and Jack, and I don’t wanna add to it.”

Chowder hums. “Well, then I guess you’re just gonna have to talk to him, huh?”

“Yeah, if he doesn’t run off at the sight of me.” 

“You’ve got this. I’m sure you guys will work this out and be the best of friends!”

“Thanks, C.”

So Derek spends the next few days trying to corner his fellow d-man so they can hash this out between them like fully functioning adults.

Which would be fine and all except for the fact that his teammate is nothing if not paranoid and must sniff out what Derek’s up to the moment he steps into a room, leaving him at a loss. It forces him to take extra measures, like catching up with one of Dex’s fellow computer nerds and asking when his last class of the day is and staking out the building in the North Quad until he spots a familiar red head. When his teammate waves off a classmate, Derek pounces.

“Hey Dex,” he greets cooly, throwing an arm over the other’s shoulder and pointedly ignoring how they tense. “You heading to the Haus before practice?”

“Actually, I was—”

“Cool, I’ll walk with you.”

He steers them toward Bristol St., cutting across the grass and around a study session or two. Usually Chowder would be waiting for them by the gym, but he has a date with Farmer today, so he’d already booked it to the Haus and was probably making out somewhere or doing something mad romantic like having a picnic at the park in the burbs. So it’s just them.

They've already learned to keep conversations to a minimum when there's no chaperone nearby, so this is old territory. As crazy as it might sound to the team, it is possible for them to find common ground and not resort to a yelling match, and they've even had a good time together once in a million. Lately, it’s just been hard to remember that.

Dex clears his throat like some middle-aged dad. “So…”

Derek raises his brow while side-eyeing him. It occurs to him that maybe, just maybe, he might not be the only one reeling from this electric tension between them; that Dex wants this fixed just as much as he does and just doesn't know how. “Got something on your mind, Poindexter?”

“Oh, uh,” Dex starts, readjusting the strap of his bag. “Nothing really, just… just thinking about how wild this year has been. How it’s gonna end. Like, no one could’ve predicted this.”

Derek carefully retracts his hands until there’s a good amount of space between them. “I guess you can say that.”

“And it’s not even halfway over.”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, I…” He shuffles a bit and their shoulders accidentally touch. “It’s weird how the semester started. With, you know…” He gestures vaguely between them. 

Now _that_ grabs Derek's full attention. He had the full intention to get this ball rolling, but it looks like William Poindexter is stepping out of his comfort zone and giving this conversation the old awkward-white-boy try. “No,” he says, purposefully, slowly, “I don’t.”

The boy runs a hand through his hair with a huff and stops walking. His shoulders are hunched, just like they were when he had scolded Derek for his sports injury, and it's telling of something he doesn't yet understand. “Okay, what I’m trying to say is that this semester is not going how I expected—how I _wanted_ —it to go. I don’t want to argue with you and I don’t want us to pretend like we don’t know each other off the ice.” Here, he grumbles. “Like, honestly, it’s fucking exhausting changing my schedule so that we wouldn’t see each other. It’s becoming a hassle.”

And this is where Derek has to give his two cents. “Wow, Poindexter, you almost had it there.”

"Will you just accept the apology!"

"I don’t know, dude. It doesn't really sound like one."

Dex takes a deep breath, then another. "Nursey, I am sorry how I reacted over the coin flip." He stops, but Derek raises his eyebrows further and nods as if to say _keep going_. Dex grimaces. "It was over the top and unfair to you. All you ever did was try to be my friend—in your own weird way—and all I ever did was be a dick." A random guy gives them a weird look as he passes by and Derek thinks there could be a mathematical equation that links the distance Dex's shoulders go up and how fast his ears turn red with respect to time. "Especially after, with the whole ignoring you. That was super jerky of me and I shouldn't have treated you like that. I should’ve just talked to you about it and I guess I had this… perception of you and decided early on that we weren’t gonna get along. Self-fulfilling prophecy or whatever. But that doesn’t excuse how I acted and I’m really, really so—”

Derek raises a hand. "I have to stop you here, Poindexter. I don't know if it's secondhand embarrassment or something else, but watching you struggle is mad uncomfortable." Dex’s expression is a mix between annoyed and angry, but he keeps his mouth shut. "But I accept your apology, dude."

Frankly, Dex looks relieved. Derek wonders how emotionally constipated his family must be for an apology like this to be so hard. Toxic masculinity strikes again. At least the guy actually said something, compared to the uptight—well, even more uptight freshman Derek knew who would scream and storm off or ignore it until his dying breath. As much as it pains Derek to admit it, he has been toning it down for the most part—no dramatic tantrums about accidental messes and polite silences when people talk politics—but since these are all basic decencies normal people give one another, he decides it doesn’t warrant a pat on the back.

Dex stares at him expectantly.

“What?”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Brah, I already accepted the apology.”

“No, that’s not…” Dex stares at him and it’s kind of funny how his eyebrows can’t seem to decide whether they want to look angry and surprised. "You can’t be serious. You really think you don’t have anything to apologize for?"

"I don't take that stuff to heart," he says like he told Bitty freshman year. “Whatever was going on between us was strictly a one-sided problem.”

"Wow. Okay. That's bullshit."

“Sports injury,” Derek reminds him idly. “You always take things seriously, dude, remember? I don’t.”

Dex frowns and if Derek didn’t know he’d be hit for it, he’d tell him he’s going to get permanent wrinkles. “You’re really trying to go down that road with me? Nurse, I’ve seen you lose your cool whenever I say quinoa.”

“ _Quinoa_. I know you’re saying it wrong on purpose.”

“You know the controversial shit that surrounds that food, right? All these healthy trends are more bad than good.” Dex shakes his head and slices his hands through the air between them as if to physically stop the flow of the conversation. “You know what, no, we’re putting that on hold until later. Right now we’re focusing on the fact that you’re being a hypocrite. No one can be as ‘chill’ as you say you are and you’re an instigator just as much as I am.”

“Are you really insulting me right now?”

Dex throws his hands up. “Oh my god! You need two people to have an argument! I fought with you and you fought with me! Could you please get off your high horse and admit it!”

The group of students across the street look over at his outburst, but don’t bother past that. He has a point, not that Derek will admit it because Dex will milk it for all he’s worth and Derek knows this. He sighs, long and suffering. “Alright. I haven’t been as patient with you as I should have been in the beginning,” he says in defeat. “As for the dibs, I wasn’t making it easy on you either—but you are a serious control freak."

Dex snorts. "Wow, Nurse, you almost had it there," he shoots back. Touché.

"I'm sorry for purposely being a dick. Happy?"

"As a part from being a dick every other day."

“Chill! I didn’t chirp you when you apologized.” Dex inclines his head in a way Derek assumes means he accepts the apology. “So this is it, huh? We’re finally putting this behind us?”

“Looks like it.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.” Dex nods. “Good.”

They start walking again and the silence that fills the space between them is the comfortable kind, and, okay, Derek would let it go, but it’s that need to have the last word popping up again, the one that only reveals itself where Dex is involved. It urges him to keep going because there’s more to say and maybe this is the only time it’ll work out. “For real though. Lay off on the thermostat. Bitty and Chowder aren't bred for the cold like us east coasters."

Dex's mouth thins and maybe Derek's finally gotten through to him with this perspective. He's practically Bitty's baking protégé and Chowder is actually the most lovable person on Earth, so using them is both a low and efficient blow. "I'll work on it."

"Chill."

"But you can't leave pie lying around." Dex actually shudders. "Seriously. It's disgusting. The Haus is barely standing and I don't want to add pests to the list of problems."

"That's because you're Team Roaches." Derek smirks, but stops Dex before he can start arguing his case (which is totally wrong, but that's beside the point). "Be wary of perishables. Got it."

There’s more that needs to be said, but they both unanimously decide to push it back for another day. The irony that they're only just compromising now that Dex has moved out isn't lost on Derek. Amazing what a little communication can achieve. Looks like college can make adults out of anyone, even them.

Dex roughly pulls him to the side before he crashes into a group of girls coming in the opposite direction. "This isn't New York, Nurse. You actually have to share the sidewalk. Stick to one side."

Derek frowns. He’s pretty sure Dex was insulting him again and he doesn’t think he likes the implications. “Are you insinuating that I’m one of those pompous douches who expects everyone to bend to my will?”

“That’s exactly what I’m insinuating.” Dex leers at him. “Life’s a double-edged sword. Don’t expect to point out flaws of other people if you can’t handle your own.”

“I am not—”

Dex pulls him aside again, this time for a cluster of professors. He shoots him a smug look like he’s presented concrete evidence to a jury before abruptly turning to cross the bridge. “Denials the first step,” he calls out behind him.

“I’m mad respectful!” He hurries after him, but in a totally chill way. “No, listen...” He begins going into detail about the type of place New York City is like and how one has to adapt to survive. And if he takes glee in the way Dex's face twists more and more into disgust, especially at the gross parts like the trash piled out on the streets, no one’s the wiser. His clean freak attitude wouldn't last a day in the city. 

When they get to the Haus, Dex checks him in the hip and Derek only nearly trips into the street. "So, are we cool?" Dex asks, leftover nervousness leaking into his tone even as he makes steady eye contact.

"Yeah, we're cool," Derek says. Then, because he can't well leave things alone, he grins and waggles his eyebrows enticingly. “Does this mean I finally get a tour of your new place?"

"No."

* * *

Their dynamic both on and off the ice gets better, enough to warrant praise from the coaches and their Hausmates. Which, okay, so maybe that’s a good enough pro for Derek to want to make their new relationship work. They do argue, but it's less fighting and more squabbling; it becomes their own kind of language, odd as it is, communication through chirps and meaningless opposition. Arguments simply for the sake of it.

There are still days when Dex can’t seem to reign in his temper and looks close to throwing all of the kitchen chairs at Derek for clicking his pen. Days where Derek hangs out with his non-hockey friends for a reprieve from all the unchill aura, throwing off all the cumulative stress that built over the weeks he didn’t spend yelling and arguing his frustrations at his defense partner. There’s dips and slip ups, Bitty gives them worried looks and the pie tastes a little bit like disappointment, but they don’t talk about it. Derek prefers it this way even when he knows they can’t keep this up forever, thinks Dex does too.

They’ll figure it out eventually.

Despite that they don’t necessarily need Chowder as the middleman to remain civil anymore. It seems his d-man is making an effort to cool his jets and not blow up at the slightest inconvenience. Dex doesn’t argue against his plights of being a person of color or try to compare it to the problems of the less wealthy and as consolation Derek doesn’t instantly snipe at him that the two are correlated because of the systematic racism within the country. Progress.

And when they aren’t at each other’s throats, Derek finds that they really do get along. As cliche as it sounds, they’re as different as night and day, but Dex’s dry remarks still make him laugh and Derek is still one of the few people to coax a genuine smile out of their residential redhead.

It comes to a point where they hang out together, outside of class and practice, and it’s chill. They go to the movies and see a thriller that freaks Derek out so much that he accidentally flings his popcorn into Dex’s lap and Dex only shoves half of it into Derek’s face; they study in the library, belongings scattered across the table and their elbows occasionally knocking, and only get kicked out once in a while; they go to a trivia night, losing spectacularly even with Derek cheating and looking up answers on his phone.

It leans toward a routine that Derek enjoys. Practice in the mornings, Tuesday through Saturday. Breakfast at the Haus. Class in the early afternoons, meetups in between for lunch or coffee at Annie’s. Frog movie marathons every Friday night. Everyday it’s filled with flannel and freckles.

Today’s an Annie’s type of day.

While they wait, Derek stretches his legs, smiling placidly when Dex frowns at him. The booths are small and they’re two dudes over six feet, so he’s definitely cramping on Dex’s space. But it’s all worth it when Dex’s mouth twists enough for his nose to get in on the action. _Move_ , says the angle of his brows, _or I’ll make you_.

Derek lifts an eyebrow. _Bring it on_.

What follows is the most aggressive-yet-ridiculous game of footsie known to man as the both of them throw their metaphorical gloves off. The table rocks between them, moving from one end to another as they try to shove it into the other’s gut, the napkin dispenser and the salt and pepper rattling precariously. Dex gets a good hit on Derek’s shin and Derek nearly kicks Dex in the nuts.

They stop abruptly when the waiter stops by. Her name is Alex and has hair two shades lighter than Dex's, complimented nicely with her pastel green uniform. Her smile is gap-toothed and sweet as she greets them, hip jutted out and pen already scribbling onto her notepad. “The usual for you boys?”

“And an oreo shake,” Derek says.

Dex’s heel digs into the inside of his thigh. “Coach'll have your head if he finds out. You don’t need it.”

“But I want it.” Derek smiles charmingly at Alex while kicking Dex’s foot away. “That’s a definite yes for the shake.”

“And two waters,” Dex adds.

The game’s back on the moment she leaves. Derek roughly shoves the table so that Dex is pinned against the booth, the latter just a second too slow to stop the offensive play and letting out a squawk when it hits his funny bone. Dex gets back at him when he manages to pull Derek down in his seat by his ankle, which then has him involuntarily shoving Dex’s knee into the underside of the table.

“Ow! You dick!”

“Sorry,” Derek says offhandedly, too busy looking under the table while he traps Dex’s left leg between the both of his. He giggles when Dex shoves him away, only for the bottom of their feet to match up and they’re left pushing against one another. Dex finally draws a line when Derek insists they do the same with the other foot. Derek boos loud enough to draw the eye of a few patrons, throwing a handful of sugar packets at Dex’s face, and it starts all over again.

By the time their food arrives, sugar is scattered on the table and in Derek’s hair, the menu is forever lost in the sliver of space between the wall and seat, and Dex is probably going to have a bruise on his calf. Alex doesn’t say anything of the mess or how the students in the booth next to them moved to the other side of the diner, only setting down their plates. “Shake’s coming right up.”

Derek digs in immediately, snatching up the ketchup from their little condiments setup while he starts on his hashbrowns, fork held awkwardly in his left hand. Dex catches the syrup before it falls over and gives him a look.

“You didn’t even order for Chowder.” Derek clucks gently in response. “And you call yourself a friend. Hashtag fake.”

“It’d be cold when he finally gets here. Besides I didn’t see you offering half your bank account to pay.”

There’s no way Derek can argue against that. He loves Chowder to the end of the world but the dude can eat his weight in bacon and Derek’s pretty sure he’d get a call from his bank if he’d spent half a grand on breakfast food instead of dope sneakers. _Derek_ , they’d say, _please tell us this is fraud_. “I can’t sustain his lifestyle.”

Dex rolls his eyes and swipes one of Derek’s sausages. Derek takes a slice of his french toast in retaliation. His shake is brought over and he gasps when Dex swipes his cherry. When he tries to retaliate by stealing the guy’s strawberries, a fork parries his away and then it begins again.

They're still bickering when Chowder gets there.

* * *

The team is invited to a party the week before their first game of the season and Derek is, maybe, just a little crossfaded.

Which is chill. Everything is so chill. The party is great and even though nothing can get Derek plastered as quickly as Shitty's tub juice, there's enough free-flowing alcohol to go around. The music is danceable, the house hosting the party has more than one table that looks sturdy enough to hold his weight and the mixture of sweat and weed is thrilling in the midnight hours. 

He's just high enough that he doesn't even notice at first. The cushion he's sinking into is lumpy but cozy, lulling him into a plane of chill existence that goes beyond the house and its inhabitants, only sharpening into focus when the blunt being shared by the girl next to him is passed his way. It's a quiet moment despite the hard bass vibrating out of the speakers and Derek loses himself to it, head tilted back as he skims the crowd lazily. It goes on like that until he spots a familiar splotch of red shouldering through the crowd to get between two people standing just off-right from Derek.

He watches as Dex shoves a guy back. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Derek sobers up real quick.

“—can’t keep it in his pants,” someone is saying and though he can’t see the face of the jerkoff, he can see the reaction it garners. 

Tango’s frown is out of place on his face and partially hidden by some rando’s shoulder. Louis and Ford are seated by the stairs, looking up from the conversation they had been having with some freshman Derek recognizes from the theatre club. Bully is by the fireplace, arm still encircling the girl he was talking up an hour ago and hair pointedly disheveled, torso twisted uncomfortably as he squints at the scene playing out before them. And then there’s Dex, who looks to be vibrating where he stands, front and center; it’s been a while since the Samwell Hockey Team & Co. arrived at the party and subsequently dispersed to their own scenes but with how flushed he is, Derek knows that he’s a couple drinks in.

That, coupled with the fact that the boy is standing toe to toe with some LAX bro, is a sure recipe for trouble.

He’s not the only one to notice. Like a call had been sent out the moment tensions started rising, Chowder appears out of the crowd with Farmer and a few of her volleyball friends. The rest of the team pop up like they’ve been summoned and so have other LAX bros and the atmosphere is definitely not chill anymore. 

Blunt in hand, he stands.

Derek knows he’s a big guy, big enough to get randomly selected for security checks at the airport, big enough that his mama has repeatedly stressed to keep calm and polite whenever situations turn for the worst. Big enough that he's never been in a real fight, his potential attackers always balking when he stands to his full height and flexes in a bluster he hopes no one challenges. But it seems as if this may be the day that he isn't big enough because though they make a pretty intimidating wall of hockey-honed muscle, the guy’s friends don't seem at all deterred. In contrast, they seem wired up, as if they had been waiting for such an occasion to truly show off their asshole colors.

Honestly, fuck LAX bros.

"Why don’t you fuck off, huh?” Dex says—or, well, more like demands.

“Or what? You’re gonna make me with that pussy ass hockey stick you swing around?”

Dex’s face twists in a snarl and Chowder meets Derek’s eye, panicked because they both know what happens next; their boy is about to go _feral_ and there's no ref or penalty box to deter a dirty check. Without thinking, Derek reaches out to grip Dex’s shoulder—a bridge which has been burned and rebuilt over and over again, tentative but stubborn, waiting for the day they make the first step to cross it without the fear of falling—only he’s too late and everything goes up in smoke anyway.

All it takes is a strike of the match and Dex is launching himself at the LAX bro.

The resulting brawl is a mess. At first it’s just a bunch of hands, pushing and shoving and grabbing and pulling, but then Derek stumbles at the fist that barely catches him in the jaw and it becomes something tangible. He loses his balance on the edge of a rug, narrowly missing cracking his skull on the corner of a table and half landing in a random girl's lap; more than one pair of hands reaches out to steady him, all rising in his defense when a LAX bro grabs the front of his shirt and attempts to throw him back in the fray.

"Yo, dude, fucking chill," he grunts, pushing with all his might and sending the guy careening into one of his buddies who had been aiming a kick to the back of Dex's knees while he grapples with Mr. Head Asshole.

Tango throws himself on the back of one when he grabs Whiskey and the three of them go down in a pile that keeps growing. Dex is in the middle of it all, refusing to go down through spite and ginger-power, and Derek is shoving his way beside him because that's what d-men do for each other. They check assholes on and off the ice and get punched in the spleen for their efforts.

The brawl ends when Louis tumbles back and crashes into the table with all the drinks, which is about when the drunks start to care. The music stops and the yelling starts.

Derek tears Dex off a LAX bro before someone else does and shit, his face is a mess. The group splits, hockey to the right and lacrosse to the left.

"Get the fuck out of here!" someone yells out. The masses agree. "Assholes!"

“Let’s go, dude,” Derek says because the night is officially over. If they don’t leave, the cops are going to get involved and that’s a whole mess of problems he doesn’t want to deal with. He pushes at Dex’s shoulder, directing him to the door, and for once Dex goes willingly.

The walk back is quiet. Chowder is sniffling, his sweater ripped at the hood, Farmer is whispering something in his ear, and the Waffles look soaked from flyaway beer. Even Tango’s quiet. When their group splits and the Tadpoles and Waffles head to their dorms, Whiskey doesn’t offer a goodbye like the rest, just stomps off. 

With Bitty gone to Providence for the weekend and Chowder deciding to spend the night at Farmer’s dorm, the Haus is dark. Ollie and Wicks must've gone to bed already because the only sound that greets them is the unnerving creaks of the building's old foundation swaying in the early winter wind. Dex shoulders through the door and, without bothering with any of the lights, starts marching to the steps to the basement.

Derek grabs his wrist before he passes the main staircase and they both stumble a little, illuminated by the dim moonlight. Dex swipes at his nose and only succeeds in making himself look all the more wild, red streaked over the corner of his mouth. His nose is still bleeding sluggishly and Derek thinks of dripping candle wax, a casualty in the war against the dark.

Out loud Derek says, “Bitty’s gonna be pissed.”

Something resembling guilt passes over the boy's face, but it’s gone soon enough, replaced with fierce determination. “I’ll talk to him.”

Derek sighs. “C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.” He gives his hand another tug. “D-men patch each other up. Holster and Ransom would have my ass if I didn’t.”

“I’m not the one who’s a fucking disaster of a hazard,” Dex says, but follows him up the stairs. He catches him when Derek trips on the last step and nearly bangs his head against the railing. “Jesus, Nurse.”

“I meant to do that.”

“No you didn’t.”

They make it to his room in one piece, Dex instinctively turning on the light like he still lives here and plopping down on the bottom mattress of the bunk bed that’s yet to be replaced, watching as Derek crosses to the door connecting his and Chowder's rooms. Slipping into the adjoining bathroom, it takes only a second or two to find a hand towel that might be Farmer's and run it under the tap. There's also a small first aid kit so he grabs that too. Then he's back, standing in front of his partner on the ice, hesitating for only a moment before shoving knees apart so that he can stand in between them. He's bringing his hand to a sharp jaw, angling it upwards so that he can run the damp towel over heated skin.

It’s quiet while Derek clears away the blood, each swipe leaving Dex face looking worse for wear. Someone must have been wearing a class ring or something because there’s a cut on his cheek that definitely needs to be looked at, small but deep. There’s also the beginnings of a bruise along his jaw, dark against his pale skin, and, oh man, Bitty is definitely going to give them shit when he comes back. 

Deeming enough time to have passed, Derek mutters, “I thought we agreed not to start fights with the LAX bros since Bitty started hanging out with the other captains.”

It seems he didn’t wait long enough because Dex glares at somewhere near Nursey's collarbone, digging into his anger reserves and coming back just as pissed off as ever. “It's not my fault they're complete asshats. If they don't wanna fight then they shouldn’t be whiny dicks when their captain can’t handle getting rejected.”

That’s a whole can of worms that Derek can’t even begin to wrap his head around. He eventually plays the scene prior to the fight over in his head, reconstructing, taking care to think about who Dex was next to and what he had said and _ah, okay_. Well, Whiskey’s got wheels, that’s for sure. Somebody should probably tell him that he could do so much better than dumbasses who lob balls at each other with glorified butterfly nets. “Just because they start something, doesn’t mean you have to respond.”

"You let shits like them feel safe, they'll keep coming back. Either you make them afraid or they make you afraid."

The answer is so Dex, but not, and Derek wants to laugh, but doesn’t. Instead he opens the kit and scrummages through it until he finds the antiseptic wipes. "So the only option is to beat the shit out of them? Have you ever tried, I don't know, being chill about it?"

“I’ll be chill when they learn how to be decent human beings." Here, Dex sneers, but it’s almost immediately replaced by a painful grimace. He hisses at Derek. “ _Ow_! You could've warned me, asshole.”

"Chill," he says, not really sorry at all. Still, when he leans in again he dabs at the red skin gently. When he figures he’s cleaned it the best he can he finds a bandage and presses it over Dex’s cut as smoothly as he can; it turns out pretty well for someone who can't even walk in a straight line, if not slightly crooked. “Maybe you should’ve thought it through before making Whiskey a target.”

Dex jerks back, grimacing. “Don’t try and twist this into something else.”

That’s exactly what Derek was trying to do even though they’re both too drunk to discuss the crazy privilege that piggybacks on Dex for these kinds of things. He looks over Dex’s hands for something to do, running his thumb over his knuckles; no broken skin, so that’s good. “What if the person you're trying to help doesn't want it. What if you're just setting them up for future problems. Whiskey sure didn’t look happy.”

"Whether Whiskey likes it or not, we're family. A stupid, hockey-playing, party-obsessed, pie-baking, over-sharing, LGBT-friendly family of assholes—but you're my assholes." Dex looks up at him and there's a stubborn jut of his chin, daring the world to stand against him. It contradicts directly with the absolute sincerity shining in his eyes. "And I take care of what's mine."

Knowing him, Derek believes that he will. Still, he lets the moment stew in silence for a few full moments before he says, “Fine.”

Dex blinks. “That’s it? You’re not going to fight me on this? No lesson on perspectives or privilege or whatever?”

“Nope,” Derek says. He drops Dex’s hands and straightens his back after what feels like hours but is probably only five minutes tops. “I'm tired as fuck so I’m going to bed.”

Dex latches onto his front pockets before he can step away. “Are you…mad at me?”

“I don’t think I am.” He feels the crash creeping up and should probably get to bed, but Dex has lost all of his fierceness. He's looking up at Derek and it's— _vulnerable_ —so surprising that he doesn't even realize he's reaching out until his hand is settled on Dex’s head. “We’re cool.”

"Cool. okay." Now Dex won't look at him, his focus somewhere at Derek's belt, and he's about to call him out on it but the guy must sense the chirp, because he lets go as if he's been stung. The lack of touch makes Derek feel like a boat that's lost its anchor, out at sea and helpless to the swaying of its turbulent currents, and that, more than anything, tells him that he needs to go the fuck to sleep. "And, uh, thanks."

"No problem."

When Dex leaves for his room and Derek's finally falling into bed, shoes and all, he almost begins to wonder when Dex started to value his opinion.

* * *

The next time he sees the basement, it's a far cry from the dungeon it used to be. Gone are the spiderwebs, the arachnids inhabiting every dusty corner finally evicted after so many years of rent-free living. The stairs have been stabilized, entire planks of wood replaced and not a single rusty nail in sight, the threat of tetanus removed along with the jagged pipe that once stuck out of the wall right above the doorway. What once was a cluttered mess is a spacious area, old equipment and other miscellaneous objects (including, but not limited to, a half-deflated floaty in the shape of a flamingo, six cheetah-print leotards, a handful of tiki torches, and half a bicycle) organized and pushed off to either side. In its place is the picturesque image of a suburban home, downsized to fit in the Haus’ basement.

Derek sets his dirty laundry on top of the dryer and peers over at the rather cozy looking door, spying the engraved _WJP_ and the potted plants that frame it, and can't help but be impressed. There's even a mailbox.

"Chill."

A muffled sound comes from beyond the door and, before Derek can even prepare himself, the doorknob is turning and a familiar pair of sweater paws is flapping in his direction.

“Nursey! Hey!” Chowder’s smile blinds him. “Dex was right—it was you coming down the stairs! You know, you’re the only one who forgets the half step at the bottom.” He laughs, not unkindly, and grabs his hand. “You gotta come and see what Dex’s done with the place! It looks soooooo cool!”

He lets himself be guided, entering and immediately feeling like Alice as she fell through the rabbit hole. It’s like stepping into a different world because if Derek thought the outside looked nice, the inside is even better. The walls are painted a warm yellow and the hardwood floor accented with rugs that look soft enough to sleep on; the entryway leads to an open space with a small sofa, a moderate TV, and a table. Beyond that is a little alcove underneath a loft bed acting as a miniature office space, desk pushed to the wall and topped with organizers and a detailed calendar. It all looks ripped right from the pages of a home improvement magazine and, if he didn’t know any better, he would think they aren’t even in Samwell anymore.

There’s the _beep_ of a microwave and then the buttery scent of popcorn fills the air, and Derek turns to see Dex himself turning away from a kitchenette carrying a big bowl and a pack of licorice candy. “Hey,” he says, casual in the way they are now. “You wanna stay for movie night?”

“Chill.” Derek leaves his bag of dirty laundry at the door.

Chowder is beaming so wide his face might split in half, obviously happy that the two haven’t thrown themselves into some death match the first chance they got—which is fair, considering their record. Honestly, the guy could ensure world peace with his go-lucky attitude alone and yet here he is, wasting it on some dumb hockey players with hard-ons for pie. They all really lucked out when he decided to attend Samwell.

They watch a couple of movies, one a romcom that both Derek and Chowder enjoy far too much and that has Dex letting loose one smile too many to be a complete coincidence. It eventually leads into a Frog Pile™, with Chowder squished in the middle and Derek’s legs draped over his lap so his feet can dig into the space between Dex’s thigh and the couch; Dex only complains once about how cold they are, taking the L in good sportsmanship as their residential goalie tucks his head under his chin. They're undoubtedly too large for the space they claim but it’s comfy as shit and Derek refuses to budge, even when his phone slips between the cushions and buzzes.

"So," he starts as the main protagonist of their second movie for the night sets off on some adventure, fingers sticky with butter and a plush pillow a comforting weight in his lap. "Has everyone gotten a tour except me?"

"Yeaup," Dex confirms even as Chowder exclaims, "He lets me use his steam shower!"

He leans back against the couch armrest, wiggling his toes, knowing Dex can feel it. “Wow, not cool, Dexidoodle."

"Don't call me that,” he says, throwing a popcorn kernel that Derek attempts to catch, only to miss and have his eye nearly poked out. “And besides, you don’t really need one. You ended up here anyway—honestly, you wouldn’t know personal space if it bit you in the ass. I’m not gonna waste time on a tour when you’ll probably be passing out on this couch every kegster. It’s why I got it anyway.”

Derek pauses, mouth open with words that don't want to be spoken. Dex had gotten the couch… for him? The boy who always has a reason for everything—Mr.Why-Should-I? himself—carved out a space for Derek in this new place, which, unless he suffered a stroke in the last few weeks and made up the entire debacle, was originally made to get away from Derek. It’s a paradox of contradictions that he can’t even begin to understand but maybe appreciates.

Idly, he taps a rhythm onto his compress sleeve. _Huh_.

Thankfully Chowder unknowingly cuts him off before his silence can be labeled as awkward. “At least it’s better than by the stairs. I always trip over you on those mornings.”

“Being a full-blown disaster is a full-time job,” Dex reminds him sarcastically. “Better he does it here than out there. At least this way I can just throw a blanket over him and ignore him."

“Chill,” Derek mutters, sinking further into his seat.

They focus on the movie after that. Derek lasts maybe half an hour, falling into a doze around the second half, but wakes up in time to see the main villain meet their demise, discreetly wiping the dried drool from the side of his mouth onto Chowder’s shoulder; his friend is dead to the world as Derek once was, head tipped back and mouth wide open as he snores softly. A quick look to his left proves yet again that Dex is probably half machine because the guy is still wide awake, scrolling through his phone and blatantly ignoring the heartfelt scene playing out on the screen. His thumb taps idly at Derek’s ankle.

A sleepy noise escapes him and his leg twitches. Dex looks up, face illuminated, and their eyes meet.

On the television screen, the protagonist and his love interest lean in and share a kiss.

Derek sneezes.

“Bless you,” Dex says, only the inflection of his voice makes it sound more like, _cover your fucking mouth_. Still, he hands over a packet of tissues instead of throwing them and it feels like a step in the right direction.

* * *

It's the first, but not the last time Derek falls asleep on that couch.

* * *

The great thing about having a Haus as awesome as theirs is that there’s never a dull moment. There’s always someone to talk to, to drink or smoke with, someone to help with homework and someone to stay up with into the early hours of the night. It’s a home away from home, a disposition that’s shared amongst the entire team. Bitty always has a pie on hand for anyone who wants one and Chowder with a hug to match. Louie has a playlist for every occasion, earbuds playing muffled, Swedish pop and always asking everyone what they’re listening to on the off chance it’s something new. Ollie and Wicks are never far off if anyone so much as says “beer pong” and wouldn’t hesitate to day drink if Derek asked. Even Ford, who doesn’t live there but sleeps over at least twice a week, is always open to offering one of her many nail polishes and inside-scoops about the next seasonal play.

It’s all great and he appreciates that his team has got his back no matter what, but—that’s not what Derek wants right now.

He had absolutely nailed his midterm for Medieval Literature and, as a personal gift to himself, decided to dedicate the rest of the day for himself. He’s been low key stressed over the class for the last couple of weeks and some time to chill would do him good. No homework, no studying, no hockey practice, just him, his music, and a good book.

Bitty’s singing fades as Derek goes down into the basement until it’s a barely-there background noise. There was a solid layer of snow blanketing the ground from the night before, but Dex had left the shades up and the place was pleasantly warm with the late afternoon sun shining through the windows. The vibe is comfy as fuck and Derek tosses _Citizen: An American Lyric_ on the desk and falls into Dex's chair, spinning around to look at the space as a whole.

 _It's a nice place_ , he thinks not for the first time. Really nice. Freshmen would put in big work to secure it as a dibs.

The rug under his feet is a bit threadbare but rough in that satisfying way, shocking him playfully when he shuffles too fervently; it causes him to jump a bit and he saves himself from falling at the last minute, crossing his ankles and tapping his toes against the side of the desk in a silent reprimand to himself. Eventually, he fills his quota of aimless staring and leans forward to tap lightly at his phone, swiping until smooth jazz plays from the speakers, and picks up his book, finding where he left off and starting up again.

He doesn’t have to wait long for Dex to get back from his class and soon enough Derek hears the _click_ of the door and the usual creaks from the stairs.

Dex drops his bag at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t seem all that surprised to see Derek, not batting an eyelash as he slips out of his shoes and nudges them off to the side. “You know, me moving down here for personal space reasons is counterintuitive if you’re always here, Nursey.”

“I needed some d-man love, Dexiroo. You wouldn’t deprive me of that, would you?”

“Easily. Get out.” Dex swipes Derek's phone before he can stop him.

Derek leans back in the chair, leather pressed to his cheek. "Hey, I was thinking…you know who you're going to give your dibs to after you graduate?" he asks idly, dog-earring the page of his book so as to not lose his place. "Unless you're going to pull a Zimmerman and hand it off to a freshman."

The music cuts off. Dex had figured out his passcode a couple weeks ago. "What?"

The topic change does exactly what Derek had hoped it would do—speak to his d-man’s inability to let any conversation go opinionated and thoroughly distract him from the fact that his space is being invaded. A confused Dex is a dangerous one and he’s risking the situation turning south toward an argumentative tone rather than an informative one, but it’s well worth the risk. Derek is happily soaking in the sight of a one confused d-man because, for once, he's considered something before Dex has. "Did you think no one would fight for your man cave?" He tips his head back and laughs. 

"Shut up!"

Like always, Derek does the exact opposite. He leans his chair back on two legs. "What did you think was going to happen when you graduate? That it’d magically turn back into a dark basement again?"

“Shut up, Nursey! Why are you even here anyway?"

Dex has what people refer to as Resting Bitch Face and combined with the natural no-nonsense tone he naturally uses twenty-four-seven, it sounds like the guy really doesn’t want Derek around.

The couch begs to differ.

"I'm in need of your sweet skills." It’s partly the truth. He has been thinking about fixing up his own living arrangement ever since seeing Dex's; with no roommate his bunk bed has been made obsolete and he's been using it as a makeshift study area, tossing his novels and notebooks there, but figures he could come up with a better system to help him not lose assignments every other week. "I was thinking of disassembling my bed and making a reading nook. Fairy lights and cup holders and everything—it's gonna be chill as fuck." He tips back the chair even further and waggles his eyebrows. "What do you say? Will you help a bro out—woah!"

"Don't—" Dex starts just as Derek loses balance and topples back.

He lands with his feet in the air. It’s not the worst wipeout he’s had by far. “Chill.” 

Dex's face pops into view, frown in place. "If I say yes, will you promise to leave? I have a report due on Saturday and I want to have it done before the away game.”

“Maybe…”

A sigh. "You're lucky I can't stand seeing you idiots fuck up the Haus more than it is." Dex slaps Derek’s foot until he does a haphazard backwards somersault, righting his chair.

Derek immediately drops right back into the seat. He snatches up a pen from the desk and then digs into the bottom drawer of his desk where he knows Dex keeps his notebooks. "Relax," he says before Dex can pop a vein. "It's one of your 'backup' notebooks—still hilarious that you have one, bee-tee-dubs." He laughs. "Backup notebook."

"You never know—"

"'You never know when you'll forget your notebook and you need to take notes,'" Derek finishes. "I lived with you for half a semester, Poindexter. I know all your weirdly-specific quirks."

Dex scoffs. "Sure."

He rolls his head to look at Dex, eyebrow raised. "You don't believe me? Chill." He flips through the notebook until he finds a page not filled with Dex's misspelled and fragmented notes and gets to work. Art of this caliber had never been his forte but he thinks he can get by with a basic sketch. "You never start your homework unless you have everything on your desk perfectly set up. Pencils on the right, textbook on the left, coffee in the corner—always in your cup with the blue lobster on it. You always wash your laundry on Sunday afternoons. You organize your shirt by type instead of color—"

"It’s called being neat!"

“You nearly had a conniption when I put my shoes with yours, remember?”

“I—”

“You could compare it to a pregame ritual. Almost like you’re—”

“I’m not superstitious, Nurse.”

Completely untrue, but Derek’s willing to bide his time on that bet. “You know what I thought was weird? Whenever you went through your trash twice or however many times before throwing it out.” He clucks while carefully connecting two boxes on the lined paged. “I bet you still have your notes from high school somewhere in your place back in Maine.”

Dex sputters. His shoulders are hitching up like they do whenever he’s about to go off on a spiel about the necessity of being prepared or whatever reason he concocts in order to validate his actions.

"Dude, I actually think you might have serious OCD." Nursey glances up. “Have you ever been checked?”

“No,” Dex answers a little too quickly.

“Chill. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” He digs into his pocket and pulls out his prescription. Shaking the bottle once, he goes back to his work while adding, “Mental health is important.”

“How is it I’ve never seen you take anything?”

“Sign of a bad roomie, Dexy.” Dex’s ear turns pink at the joke. “Haha, no, I don’t take them often and I’m usually pretty good with keeping chill.” He sticks out his tongue, finishing up the last of his lines before shoving the notebook into Dex's face.

"That's…" Dex’s eyes go cross-eyed for a second before focusing on the drawing, his apparent anger evaporating in face of the distraction (Nursey knew a good portion of it was all for dramatic effect). He takes the notebook from Derek. "That's actually pretty good."

Derek shrugs, leaning back in the chair again. "Mamãe's an architect. She leaves all her drawings around the house and I used to color them for fun when I was younger."

The look Dex sends his way is just shy of scathing, more on the edge of disbelief. "And you're an English major?"

"Yeah. Felt like the right thing to choose, ya know?"

"Of course it did." Dex sighs, focusing back on the drawing. His jaw ticks and it’s a tell-tale sign that the hamster in his head is sprinting up a marathon. "I can make do with this, I think. Maybe add another extra pair of beams so it's stable… Though I don't know if we have everything we need at the Haus—"

"Don't sweat it, Dexy. My room, my funds. Just tell me what you need and I'll get it."

"I don't trust you in a hardware store. You'll impale yourself on a rake." He trails a finger halfway down the notebook’s spine, tapping it once when he comes to a decision. "Besides, I'm the one with a car. We'll both go."

"Yeah?" Derek grins. "Brah. D-men road trip."

"A twenty minute drive isn't a road trip."

"It is if we get food. We gotta stop by Annie's first. I need a Chai Tea Latte.”

“I wouldn't consider that a _need_ , per se.”

“Don’t knock it until you try it.”

"Yeah, well, whatever, c'mon," he says and stands. “There’s a hardware store a few miles from the campus.”

Derek blinks. "Wait, what. Right now?"

Dex looks annoyed he’d even ask that. "Unless you have anything else to do, then yes. Now."

Derek shrugs. "Nope."

"Cool. Let's go." Dex digs into his drawer and tosses Derek one of his sweaters. "And please put that on so I don't have to look at that ugly shirt anymore."

Derek looks down at his clothes. He’d gotten half a dozen shirts like it from Abercrombie because the colors were dope and had already gotten half a dozen more compliments since wearing it. "Brah, it's flowers."

"It's obnoxious,” Dex counters, shrugging on a jacket of his own and signifying how truly cold it must be because Dex is the epitome of a frozen lake, stubborn in the wake of spring. If he’s bundling up, Maine born and bred, then the temperature outside must be something fierce. “You’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” he continues, combing through his bangs and fixing whatever the static of the jacket had messed up, already halfway up the basement stairs, “and there’s no way I’m being associated with you dressed like that.”

“Worried about your street cred, Dexy?”

Dex sighs and it’s reverberated through the empty halfway of the Haus. “Nursey. Shut up and put on the jacket.” Without waiting to see if Derek did what he asked, he yanks the front door open and _shit, it’s freezing_.

Derek puts on the jacket. On the way out he throws an arm around the guy and tells him all the plans he’s making, and Dex only rolls his eyes.

* * *

Ever since he was a freshman, the Haus, or at least the kitchen, always smelled like a confectionery. It’s not the thing one usually affiliates with a frat house, but Derek isn't going to complain when the baking gods have blessed him with such an honor. So when he comes through the door following his third and final class of the day, Derek’s ready for whatever contraband goodie that most likely goes against the diet plan. He hasn’t eaten since lunch and something sweet will always trump the healthier option.

Chowder’s already licking the last of the chocolate filling from the red mixing bowl, smugly waving his spoon at Derek, and _chill, he missed getting dibs_!

Now, he could go back out and buy something, but Bitty and Dex are right there and Derek decides that he has a good chance at convincing one of them to give him a little something. Considering the fact that Countdown by Beyonce is playing, that means Bitty's baking something special for Jack and trying at that angle would be a lost cause. Instead, Derek sets his sights on Dex. 

He comes up from behind, peeking over Dex’s shoulder. “Is that sweet potato?”

Dex jerks. “Jesus, Nurse, personal space.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes, it’s sweet potato. Now back off.”

Derek cheers. The hockey gods are smiling down on him. “Chill!”

“Who said you’re getting the leftovers?”

Okay, that’s a terrible turn of events. He grips Dex’s shoulders, shaking him a little, whining, “Way to prove none of my friends are cool, Dexy.”

“Hey!” Chowder says, indignant, from the table.

“Ford made matching sweaters for her, Tango, and Whiskey! Ollie and Wicky took Bitty to that Bakery Expo!” As if to make his case, Bitty sighs, probably reliving the memory with a baking boner. “And you won’t even let me have dibs on the filling.”

Dex tries to shoulder him away, but Derek is persistent. If he knew he wouldn’t be kicked out of the kitchen, he’d jump on Dex’s back until he gave him the entire bowl of filling, but he’s seen his partner tackle a guy on the ice for something as simple as a careless shoulder bump so he settles for leaning in until his chest presses against the bulge of a bicep. 

Dex frowns at his work, slapping at the hand Derek tries to sneak toward it. “I have an idea. How about you do the cool thing? Why do I have to be the one to do it, huh?”

“I tried, but _someone_ shot down all my ideas.”

The inhale his fellow d-man takes is large enough that it moves Derek with it and, almost immediately, Derek knows what his next words are going to be. “Because they were ridiculous!” Dex starts, turning over some of the sweet potato filling with maybe too much vigor. “Chipmunk taxidermy? A santa pub crawl? Riding the subway with no pants? Really? I can’t be the only one recognizing how weird those sound!”

“Oh! Caitlin loved that last one!” Chowder says excitedly. “She said we should take pictures so she could show her friends. I guess they’re interested too!”

“That’s certainly one thing they could be interested in,” Bitty says in that way he does, tone innocent enough for polite society but with a raised eyebrow that details a hidden message to make any granny grip her pearls. Derek can feel Dex’s body heat up a couple of degrees at the words and it’s almost cute how flustered he can get about public nudity despite the fact that the whole Haus has seen each other's junk more times than any of them could count. “But let’s scrap that idea, shall we? I don’t need the Samwell Hockey Team to be banned from another form of public transportation.”

Derek wants to argue and say that _technically_ the Samwell Hockey Team isn’t banned from the city’s buses, only Shitty is, but eventually decides against it. The man is a legend and his acts of hockey holiness need no justification.

But Bitty beats him to it with a quick look over his shoulder. “Nursey, honey, could you get me the flour? It’s in the cabinet by your right.”

“One sack of pulverized grain coming right up.” Derek detaches himself from Dex, though not before nudging the bowl Dex is laboring over and causing the pinch of nutmeg he was adding to end up on the counter instead. Dex clicks his tongue and makes a threatening gesture with his spatula, but Derek skips away before he can act on it. 

The cabinet is an organized mess when he opens it. Still, he sees the already opened bag Bitty was referencing and snatches it up, ready to bargain this small act as helpful enough to warrant a taste of whatever the duo are making.

“Careful. Chowder dropped some butter earlier.”

“Relax, Bitty. It’s not like it’s a banana peel or anything.”

Those are his famous last words because it's at that moment Derek's foot flies out like in a cartoon and the world flips on its axis, guiding him to fall gracelessly on his ass. And in a move reminiscent of slap-stick comedy, the bag of flour he was carrying gets launched into the air for a total of three seconds before gravity takes its course and has it exploding upon impact to the ground. Then, all Derek can see is white.

He sits up, coughing. Eyes squeezed shut, he hears clattering and then there’s a half a dozen hands hauling him up. He’s handled into a chair and then patted down.

“Sweet Heavens! Are you alright, hun?” Bitty asks, wiping down his back and shoulders. “That was some fall.”

A big hand maneuvers his face up. Dex’s, he can tell, from the bitten-down nails. “You didn’t get any of it in your eyes, did you?” He slaps Derek’s hand away when he goes to wipe at them. “Don’t do that! Hold on.”

There’s the sound of the sink, then footsteps, and then someone getting up in his personal space to press a wet towel to his face. Derek remains still as the flour is wiped from his eyes. When there’s a break in the cleaning, Derek blinks his eyes open. Dex’s face is close to his and wow, the guy has so many freckles, more popping up the longer you look. Bitty and Chowder peek over his shoulder, twin expressions of worry.

“Yo, did I get some air?”

“Not even close,” Dex deadpans while Chowder says, “It kind of looked like you were trying to flip and stopped halfway.”

Bitty gives Derek’s shoulder a squeeze. “Do you need to see the team physician?”

He takes stock of his body. Nothing’s broken, which is good, but he feels like there might be a bruise on his butt come tomorrow morning. “It’s chill. Anna said she wouldn’t be in town until Saturday anyway.”

Dex tosses him the rag to clean up the rest of his face and arms. “The fact that you’re on a first name basis says so much.”

Derek aims to throw the rag back but Chowder snatches it out of his hands before he can. “Sorry about the mess, Bitty,” he says instead of blowing a raspberry at Dex. “I’ll buy you more flour.”

“No worries! Livin’ with all of y’all as long as I have, I always buy a spare bag.” Bitty then surveys the kitchen floor. “Chowder? Could you get the broom and some wipes? They should all be in the closet.”

“On it!” Chowder hands the rag back to Derek, his eyes all big and pleading like they always get when asking for him and Dex to behave. When Derek gives him a thumbs up, he brightens up as quickly as flipping a switch and heads off.

Bitty throws the pathetic-looking flour bag in the trash with a sigh and begins to wipe down the table and chairs. Derek tries to wipe away the rest of the flour off him with no avail. Somehow it's made its way into his jeans. 

After he’s created a ring of flour around him and the chair, Dex sighs. “Take a shower and then you can have the leftovers.”

“Ha ha, nice.”

Another sigh. “Hold on…” Dex frowns at him and, stepping forward before Derek can ask him about it, runs a hand through his hair. It’s not like the many strangers he’s encountered who have some weird fascination with the tight curls, no lingering touch or uncomfortable tug, just a quick run through with an air of efficiency that’s expected from Dex, and then it’s over. There's a nugget of condensed flour and hairspray pinched between his fingers. “Try not to make a mess on your way. The less there is to clean, the better.”

That’s as nice as Dex is going to be about the entire thing (which, compared to the fury he went through when he found out Derek caught the flu, is a big step up). Derek does a little salute.

That earns him an eye roll. Dex rids his hands of flour and turns to Bitty. “Did any of it get in the filling? I don’t want to have to make it all over again.”

Derek leaves when Chowder comes back with all the cleaning supplies, barely remembering to take off his shoes before heading upstairs. He strips quickly, leaving the ghostly outfit a pile on the floor, and steps into the shower to wash all remnants of flour from his body, head pushed right under the nozzle to soak his head and bemoaning the dryness he'll have to deal with come morning. Steam fills the room as he takes his time, relaxing his shoulders and clearing his head, sweeping all those end of the year worries right down the drain and leaving him completely refreshed. Then he's slipping into old jeans and a pullover that may or may nor have been Chowder's at some point if the faded caricature of a shark over his heart is anything to go by, forgoing socks as he slouches back downstairs.

The kitchen he returns to is spotless, the cartoonish outline of him on the floor gone and the chair he had been sitting in wiped clean. And there, on the counter, with a little sticky note that simply reads, _for the dumbass with the shitty balance_ , is a bowl of leftover sweet potato filling.

"Oh," Derek says to the empty room. "Chill."

* * *

Three days later, Derek wakes up to the sound of a crash.

He jerks in his bed, legs tangled with the blanket, and nearly takes a six foot drop. It’s only the catch of his ankle against the railing that saves him, the cool texture causing goosebumps to ripple across his flesh as his mind rises from the fog of slumber, and he groans when he fumbles for his phone and sees that it’s still three hours too early to be awake despite being late in the morning. Nevertheless, he stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, blinking slowly at his reflection. No amount of water or finger combing fixes his bed head, so he shrugs it off and hops into some sweats before making his way downstairs.

He’s just awake enough to not walk into the ladder that’s stationed in the middle of the kitchen. 

Derek rubs at his bleary eyes and the world comes into focus. The world and the crouched figure at the foot of the ladder that he'd glossed over. It’s Dex, hat on backwards and his usual flannel stretched over his shoulders, frowning at whatever is in his hands. Even this early, Derek knows from his expression that he’s found another shitty fix-up in the Haus.

Without prompting, Derek squats down beside him. "What handyman mission are you up to now?"

Dex spares him a quick once-over, gaze sticking to his cheek for all of a second before dropping back down. "Bitty says the lights are acting up,” he tells him, adjusting the grip of the tool in his hand. “I'm going to check the wiring."

Derek yawns. “Need help?”

Vague amusement curls Dex's lips. “I don’t think you’ve ever held a drill in your life.”

It's true but Derek refuses to let that stop him. He shrugs, aiming for chill and totally succeeding. "How hard can it be—just turn it on and make sure the pointy end is facing away from your face."

The smile grows wry. "The pointy end? You mean the drill bit?"

"Drill this," Derek immediately says, aiming for a dab and unbalancing himself, tilting too far to the left and tripping over the toolbox on the floor. "Oh shit."

By the time the world has righted itself and he’s ass-planted on the kitchen floor, Dex is peering down at him. The worried expression on his face clears when Derek opens his eyes and blinks up at him, ginger eyebrows rising to his hairline as he presses his lips together in a look that could almost be fond if Derek didn’t know for a fact that his d-man partner wasn’t secretly a robot sent from the future.

“You good, man?”

Derek knits his fingers together and settles them behind his head, leaning back. “Always.”

That gets an almost laugh, huffed and disguised as a scoff but undeniably a sound of amusement. He whirs the drill in his direction playfully. “Just don’t break anything. I don’t want any more jobs.”

“Like you don’t fill that sexy handyman role perfectly. Admit it, you love it.”

“I admit nothing.”

Derek lets out a single laugh. “That’s a confession in itself.”

His ginger hausmate doesn’t designate to respond, instead rising and reaching for the small ladder propped against the wall. He sets it up, metal leg nudging against the curve of Derek’s waist, and climbs it until he can reach the opening on the wall. Nimble fingers pry and suddenly there’s a wonderland of wires and buttons, tangled and chaotic. The sight has a low whistle escaping Derek’s mouth, cut off abruptly when an idea hits. It is slow forming, piece by clever piece, until the need to act on it is impossible to ignore and he moves to make it a reality.

Dex glances down at him and, seeing Derek's phone out, rolls his eyes.

Almost immediately, he presses the record button. "Episode one of Poindexter Repairs,” he starts, squinting one eye and giving the boy a devilish grin when he looks again. “C’mon, Dexy Boy, what's the project for today?"

Dex turns away, but his shoulders don’t hunch up like they usually do whenever the lens of a camera is angled his way. "I already told you,” he says, casual like he rarely is, “I'm checking the wiring for the lights. They've been kind of spotty. It's hard for Bitty to bake when the lights keep going off."

“Eye-dee-kay, man, I’m pretty sure Bitty could bake with his eyes closed.”

A lanyard hangs from his defense partner’s pocket, swaying as he shifts his right foot on a higher step; his balance is steady and the ladder doesn’t wobble once. It’s the exact opposite of Derek’s camera angle, which has slipped down to record the wrinkles of denim rather than the fritz of wires. Still, Dex doesn’t seem to notice, squinting into the hole as he mumbles, “Bitty could be stuck at the bottom of a well and still find a way to bake a thank-you pie for whoever pulled him out.”

“Too true.” He adjusts the phone. “So, where’d you learn to do this?”

“My uncle’s an electrician.”

“I thought he was a lobster fisher. Or a mechanic?” He pauses, trying to remember. There have been many conversations following a demonstration of an oddly specific skill that had ended with the redhead just shrugging his shoulders and talking of time spent at a relative's workshop or boat or office or farm or smithery. “How many uncles do you even have, brah?”

“Eleven.”

Derek makes a drawn out whistle. "Damn. Your grandparents were _busy_."

The glare leveled at him could curdle milk. “Yeah, never talk about my grandparents' sex life again."

"I'm just sayin', there isn't enough time in the day—"

"And we're done," Dex interrupts. He turns back into the hole in the ceiling, holding out an expect hand. "Unless you want to start eating in the dark, do something other than chirp me and hand me some pliers.”

Derek looks down at the toolbox and the tools inside, picking one at random. "Is this it?"

"No."

He tries another. "What about this?"

“No, that’s a socket wrench—that’s an allen key. Not the hammer. Left, left, left—no, too far—oh my God, I know you’re screwing with me! For fucks sake, pass me the—”

Derek shuffles to his feet and slips the pliers into Dex’s hands with a shit-eating grin. “Chill out, William.”

“Don’t call me William.”

He nods solemnly. “Oh right, it's Billiam the Third. Gonna carry on that silver fox tradition, dude? Make your grandpappy proud.”

“So that’s what does it for you, huh? Senior citizens getting off.” His hand disappears into the hole and there’s the distinctive sound of something being snipped. “Dude, are you even holding the ladder?”

He hops on the lowest step, smirking when Dex has to hastily grip the top when the entire thing shakes. For maybe a second and a half, he considers the idea of purposefully throwing himself back and seeing what his fellow d-man will do; what is more powerful, he wonders, gravity or sheer ginger fury? He’s kinda betting on the latter.

The next few minutes he alternates from zoning out and inappropriately zooming in on Dex’s nostrils; he’s just reaching the highest setting when they flare suddenly and Dex demands, “Turn that thing off.”

For once Derek does what he asks, no questions asked. “What’s up?”

But Dex just jumps off the ladder and hurries into the living room, Derek stumbling over himself to follow. Entering just in time to see the boy push the entertainment system away from the wall and drop to his knees, his shoulders just a bit too wide to fit in the space he made and the television wobbling precariously above him. Whatever he sees must be bad, because he bursts into a string of curses, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit_."

There, in his hand, he holds a piece of chewed up wire.

 _Uh oh._ So they have a bit of an infestation problem. No wonder Dex wanted him to turn his live stream off. “Yo, who’s going to be the one to tell Bitty?”

“Tell me what?”

They both jump. Somehow, their captain managed to get behind the two of them without either of them knowing, a miniature upcoming storm behind an innocent face. 

In the end they don’t have to tell him anything because Bitty takes one look at the miserable looking wire in Dex’s hand and somehow knows. His eyes narrow and his mouth thins and _holy shit, that’s kind of terrifying_. “Rats.”

“A lot of the wiring is chewed up. My best guess is that they got in during Fall. We had a couple of messes during Hausgiving…" Dex trails off and Derek can just see where his thought process is leading him, can see him swallow loudly as he decides to die on this hill.

“If you even insinuate that it’s because I left pie out—”

“They had to be lured in with food—” Dex starts.

“This is a frat house! Two-thirds of it smells like dirty laundry all the time!” Okay, Bitty’s side-eye was straight up rude. Derek's been careful to keep his messes strictly in his room with only one major incident this month, and that could be blamed on Bully's birthday kegster. In his defense, he hadn't been in charge of the lounge clean-up and he'd been too drunk to remember where he'd hidden the cake or his underwear that night. “It could be a number of things… or people.”

Dex makes a skeptical noise at the back of his throat and Derek has half a mind to start something because of it. But then the oven’s timer goes off and it feels like one of those old war movies, foreboding and shiver-inducing.

"I don't want to find a single sewer-fucking-hackeysack-on-legs in this house!” Bitty announces with fervor, marching over to the closet and fishing out a broom, wielding it like a weapon. Like King Arthur and Excalibur or Ninurta and Sharur. “I don’t care how you boys do it—trap it with cheese or harpoon it with scissors—as long as they’re gone!”

Derek blinks because _did he hear that right_? Bitty doesn’t even curse as much as the rest of the guys, so to hear something so crude is incredible. “No lie. That's disgusting."

"If you aim right then it’s a quick end,” their captain informs with assurity that only comes from experience. “Poison is more humane than blinding them with windex and hitting them with a broom, but then they have a chance of escaping and crawling underground to die—then you have a whole new problem and your home smells like dead rat."

Dex grimaces. "Jesus, Bitty."

Bitty ignores them, going full Captain Mode. "We'll have to go around the Haus. Seal any cracks in the walls. Anything smaller than a quarter inch needs to be filled. Cut off any possible water sources. No movie nights, no kegsters, and no pie until this place is rat free."

Now that’s undeserving punishment and Derek sees Dex start to say something before Bitty silences him with a look. The times Bitty enforces his will on the team are few in between, only because he doesn’t have to ask more than once for anyone to fall in place from the power of his Southern hospitality alone, and it really shows what an iron grip he has on their social lives.

Jack Zimmerman could never.

“Chill,” Derek says.

Bitty aims his glare at him this time around. Over his head, Dex makes eye contact and not even months of careful work could bring two people closer together than like this moment.

“I’ll head to the store," Dex says carefully. "Bitty, your pie—"

"It's a farther drive to downtown, but we can't risk anyone seeing you in Murder Stop'n'Shoppe." There’s a rolled-up towel tied around his forehead that wasn’t there a second ago; with it, their small captain looks like a full-fledged soldier going to war. "We need to keep it all discreet. Lord knows we don't need the whole neighborhood knowing. The LAX house spreads gossip worse than my meemaw at a church lunch. Can't trust anyone."

"I’ll get some sealer and traps then...”

"Take all the funds from the Sin Bin."

Dex inches his way past as if afraid that one step will incite wrath of their littlest teammate, carefully grabbing the jar of funds where it sits on the dining table and tucking it under his arm. He’s shoulder to shoulder with Derek when he asks under his breath, “You coming or not?” A little louder, he speaks to the whole Haus in general. "I'm going to need a hand at the store."

There’s no way Derek’s going to let this pass at freedom slip, so he swipes a hoodie from the pile in the kitchen and hurries after Dex while Bitty starts lining up all the brooms they have, calling for— _demanding_ Ollie and Wicks to get a storage crate to protect all the mini pies already baked. The place is starting to feel like a totalitarian state.

They’re leaving just as Bully and Louis are walking up the front steps. Derek pats Bully on the shoulder solemnly. “Good luck.”

Before any of them can ask, a yell of "EGGS! LINE UP!" practically shakes the Haus.

Dex shoves at Derek, nearly making him fall down the porch steps, and they make a break for his truck. The Sin Bin jangles as they cut across the lawn and not even the LAX bros’ heckling have them slowing their escape. "Go, go, go!"

* * *

What follows is the wildest rat hunt in fraternity history.

It’s full of sweat and tears, a Samwell edition of Lord of the Flies if there ever was one. Derek sees parts of his teammates he never wants to see again; especially Whiskey, whose aloofness turns into sheer merciless malice when it comes to the vermin that are unlucky enough to be found nesting under his favorite armchair. Even sweet Tango, who questions every order and every trap, is sent into a frenzy when a trio of rats try to scamper up his pant leg.

It ends with a garbage bag filled with dead rats, two broken brooms and a moment of silence for a pie that they were too late to save.

* * *

By the time the next kegster comes along, the whole team is ready to let loose. Despite the odds stacked against them, rumors of the rat infestation doesn't spread past Haus walls and the Samwell Men's Hockey keeps its cred as the bringers of the dopest party for another year. Order is restored.

Derek gives his patrol the slip within half an hour of arriving, which is, coincidentally enough, when the girls volleyball team makes an appearance and Chowder's thoroughly distracted by the sight of his girlfriend in fishnet leggings. It's as easy as slipping behind a group of party goers as they cross the room, saluting his fellow teammate as he fights a nosebleed before fucking off to the back patio where the booze is stored. The kegster is in full swing by the time he decides to dance and he's managed to down three cups of tub juice within twenty minutes because he's that amazing.

Five—six—shit, time is an illusion—minutes after that, he sees his one and only, his fellow d-man, Billiam Jacobi Pondexter. He's leaning against the wall next to the TV, looking red-headed and out of place, and that's enough for Derek to set his new course.

Sometime on the way over he stumbles and spills his drink all over Dex's shirt. "Oops."

"Jesus Christ," Dex says and Derek thinks it's hilarious. He doesn't know what day it is or what he was doing before, only that he's doubled down laughing hard enough to make his stomach hurt. 

Then the world is tilting and Derek tilts with it, tumbling through the rabbit hole of intoxication. Thankfully, it stops just as it begins, suddenly and all at once; there's a hand on his hip and another braced against his bicep, solid and strong, grounding him before he can chase the darkness that slinks under his eyelids.

"You're a wreck, dude," says his savior, breath hot against his temple. "How much have you had to drink?"

“Dunno,” he manages to say. He had stopped counting after his fourth drink, when the lights had started blending together and the bodies around him became faceless in their drunken familiarity. 

Hands rearrange his leaded limbs and Derek lets them, turning pliant when his head lolls and he spots freckles crawling up a pale neck like a vine to a shakespearean balcony. The sight is sharp in his otherwise foggy existence and he latches onto it with focus unbecoming of a person who's done three body shots in the last hour. Before he can think better of it, his fingers are fumbling in an attempt to trace melanin stars, making crooked constellations on a living canvas.

There's a deep sigh, paradoxical to the light touch at his waist and the utter lack of the usual frustration that comes from those on Nursey Patrol. "Well, c’mon, hot mess express, let's get you to bed before you puke on some girl's lap."

Derek pouts. "That was one time."

“Twice, actually.”

He spots a potential dance partner as they pass by the ping pong tables. He stalls and gets their attention, leaning precariously out of the almost-hug him and Dex are tangled in. "Hey," Derek says, lowering his voice to give it that edge that always makes him score. "Do you come here often—"

"Okay, no, we're not doing this."

The noise drops as they go up the stairs even though Derek can still feel the music vibrating in his bones, the fun of the party replaced with the dark emptiness of the second level. He swipes at the caution tape, flapping his hand when it sticks. "You're such a cockblock—" He burps and the back of his throat burns, acid-like. "Did I have a fireball?"

"I don't know. Did you?"

He burps again, feeling funny. Then his stomach gives one big kick that has him nearly spilling chunks. He slaps a hand over his mouth. 

"Shit!" Dex is dragging him now, Derek’s feet falling behind and useless, turning away from his room and shoving them through the doorway to the bathroom. Everything’s starting to spin. 

The sudden light burns, but Derek's throat burns worse. He roughly drops to his knees, hands gripping the rim of the toilet bowl, and pukes his guts out.

He heaves, the lurches in his stomach rocking his whole body, and spits out what seems like his entire trachea. It's super gross and he grimaces, choking slightly. There's a hand in the middle of his back and a voice murmuring, "Okay, you're okay."

Derek wipes his mouth with the back of his hand when he's finished and it takes him the span of four deep breaths for him to become aware of the late hour, his whereabouts, and the bad choices that led him there. The taste in his mouth is bitter, lined with regret and disappointment and _fuck_ , does he hate past-Derek. The buzzing energy that had coursed through him hours ago is gone, leaving him a mere husk of his usual self, tired and sweaty. Just lifting his neck takes a herculean effort, so he refuses to even attempt to stand or else risk his head splitting wide open; the porcelain is cool against his forehead when he lays it down with a groan.

He doesn't know when he closed his eyes, but opens them when he hears the tap run. The constellations are back, angled and distant, colored different under the stupid, bright lights, and Derek reaches out for them again, but his hand is caught before it can make contact. Then something cold is pressed to the back of his neck, water trickling down into his collar, and he sighs in relief.

The toilet flushes and he goes, "Woooooosh."

Someone snorts. It's Dex because oh yeah, he's here too. "Hey, Nursey," he says softy, quietly, gently. "Let’s get you to bed."

"Yeah. Okay."

* * *

The first thing Derek notices waking up is the throbbing headache. The second thing he notices is that he’s in his boxers. The third thing he notices is that someone is crouching beside his bed and he turns his head instinctively, breathing in deep and finding familiarity in the scent of shower gel and oil. Drowsy, he blinks open his eyes and—

 _Careful_ , Mama had scolded one summer on a coast far away, carefully guiding his head away from the sky and back to earth. _Stare too long and you'll go blind_.

—the sun looks back.

"How do you feel?" Dex asks, red and fire and every allegory in between. 

Derek groans.

Dex just grins and it is a wolfish thing, curling higher on one side and wrinkling his nose with its fierceness. It is an expression that makes no apologies for what it is, stark and confident, and Derek feels like a boy again, foolish and oh-so-impressionable, trying to get one last look at the sun even when it burns, burns, burns.

Something lands on his stomach and Derek manages not to puke all over his bed. Last night was enough, thank you. 

“You’re such an—asshole,” he tells him, squeezing his eyes shut, but he clutches the water bottle close. It's cold to the touch and it soothes the bite of heat that lingers from a moment he doesn't remember, collecting at the lip of a beer bottle and dripping down before he can taste. "I'm dying. See if I invite you to my funeral now."

A small packet of pain reliever rattles before it hits Derek in the neck. “Sad. And I had a poem planned for my speech.”

“Better make everyone cry.” Derek rests on his elbow and manages to uncap the bottle. “Sonnet?”

“Haiku.”

“Fuck you.”

Dex snorts when Derek spills half the water on his chest.

* * *

The end of the year comes up quicker than anyone expected. After winning the Frozen Four, the end of the semester is a blur of boring, but necessary things: studying, homework assignments, forcing Bitty to write his fucking thesis, essays, locking Dex in the basement to catch up on his fucking sleep, more studying, exams.

Then comes graduation.

The rest of the team are already gone once the ceremony ends, each one giving Bitty their sincere and often tearful goodbye. Chowder’s flight isn’t until six, Derek’s at seven, both having already unspokenly agreed that they’ll share a ride to the international airport, and Dex is still lingering despite having been ready to hit the road since that morning, so they’re still kicking it at the Haus when Jack brings his car to pick up the last of Bitty’s stuff.

“Look at y’all, so grown up,” Bitty says fondly as he steps down the stairs for the last time. He’s changed out of his gown and is radiating such pure happiness levels that Derek thought only Chowder could achieve. “I need a picture before I go! C’mon, together now.”

Unable to deny him even if they wanted to, they do as they’re told. They get a couple photos in, all the frogs together, some with Jack, Bitty with each of them separately, and it slowly becomes a small photoshoot with how relentless Bitty becomes to immortalize these memories. When the idea of one with only Derek and Dex together comes up, Derek’s up for it and, lo and behold, Dex, the king of personal space, willingly pulls Derek in. And the pièce de résistance? He even settles his hand in Derek’s hair like it’s the easiest thing in the world and it’s such a far cry from the angry, close-minded, borderline homophobe guy who barely tolerated anyone giving him more than a gruff pack on the back after a good pass that it has Chowder gasping.

Bitty takes the picture and it’s as simple as that. Derek side-eyes Dex over the bridge of his nose, unable to help himself. “Didn’t know you were a modeling type, Poindexter.”

Dex nails him in the sternum. “Fuck you, dude. I only took this picture for Bitty, alright? We owe him.”

“Haha sure, Dex, also _ow_.”

“Now boys,” Bitty starts but it's said with resigned affection so Derek knows that they're in the clear for any real scolding. The two of them haven't had a serious altercation since the beginning of sophomore year and it seems that their usual bickering has become something of commonplace, dib fiasco excluded.

Chowder looks at Bitty’s phone over his shoulder. “Oh man, I want ten copies!”

“God. What has this college done to me?”

 _It made you better_ , Derek wants to say, but doesn’t. Despite the positive sentiment, Dex might actually sock him again and then Derek will have to sock him back and then it’ll be a thing and Bitty will really scold them. However, it doesn’t make the statement any less true. There’s a reason Derek voted him for Captaincy and it’s not because of the paranoia (but that is a factor). Looking at Bitty strangely to baking with the guy, from losing his cool every minute to picking his battles, every little change made him better fit for the C.

It feels surreal when Bitty hands the Haus keys to Dex, an end of an era because next year it's going to be different. Bitty won't be in the kitchen baking pies, won't play Beyoncé on blast while he showers, and they won't hear his Southern accent calling them down for Team Breakfast or see him smiling at his phone after a call with Jack.

“Y’all better visit this summer, you hear? You’re all welcome to come by for pie.”

The amount of heartfelt sincerity in his voice is seriously touching and even Dex, with his set brows and insistent frown isn’t immune when Bitty blatantly wipes his eyes. Derek doesn’t cry even though crying would be chill. Chowder, on the other hand, has no qualms about a few shed tears and clings to Bitty, eventually having to be gently pried away by the two defense men when it gets to water park levels.

Twenty minutes later and Bitty walks out the Haus door for the last time.

"Providence is a thirty minute drive away," Dex says gently as they wave goodbye as Bitty and Jack drive off into the sunset. It would be out of character, but Chowder brings out the softy in everyone.

"Still," Chowder says mournfully.

Derek pats him on the back as they direct him back inside. Not wanting the day to end off on such a sad note, they decide to have one last frogpile to try to cheer Chowder up with the time they have left. Derek gets his laptop connected to the TV and lets Chowder choose something to watch while Dex scrounges around for the last of the leftovers he’d been planning on taking home.

They manage a decent cuddle pile even with the Haus packed up and empty, their suitcases settled in the hallway by the door, sharing the last of Bitty’s pie while the episode of Great British Bake Off starts up. One more summer and then they’ll be back as seniors, one more school year and then they’ll be graduates, one more year and then it’s goodbye Samwell. As cliche as it is, time snuck up on them, but at least they can pretend that their turn isn’t just around the corner.

They manage to push off the inevitable and watch three episodes until they finally have to head out. Surprisingly enough, after they clean up Dex doesn’t hesitate to cut them off at the door. “I’ll drive you,” he offers.

“You don’t have to,” Derek says as Chowder happily exclaims, “Yes!”

Dex is already shouldering his bag, snatching his keys from the hook and jangling them. “I don't mind," he tells them, shoulders looser than he's ever seen them. "Besides, it’s on the way.”

With their bags all piled in the truck’s bed and the windows down to let in the nice spring air, the ride to the airport is chill. Chowder doesn’t stop talking the whole ride, a hand on each of their seats and leaning over the divider like he’s incapable of laying back. Dex looks almost calm; he ribs Derek for his taste in music, but doesn’t stop him from playing the next song, and he doesn’t complain when Derek props his feet on the dashboard either.

Chowder points out the right terminal when they get to the airport and Dex parks in one of the loading zones without asking whether he should. He helps them get their bags from bed like their personal chauffeur and punches Derek in the shoulder when he says it out loud.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Dex says and it’s so sincere that Derek nearly let’s go of his chill. Thank god he’s got that shit on lock.

Chowder has considerably less chill and is in tears for the second time that day. He throws his arms around Dex and practically squeezes the life out of him. “I'm going to miss you too! But we'll call and facetime and it'll feel like no time at all until we're back at Samwell! Gosh, and as seniors!"

“Please don’t say that. I’ll explode if I have to think about it for more than three seconds.”

When Dex turns to him, Derek opens his arms. “Bring it in, Poindexter.”

With a roll of his eyes, Dex willingly steps forward and hugs him for all he’s worth. Derek is surprised by the intensity, strangely aware of how he breathes in and out, how Dex’s arm is snug around his neck, how their chests brush one another, but returns it with all the enthusiasm he has on hand. He can’t remember if they’ve actually hugged like this before, not counting cellys or impromptu wrestling matches or all the times he’s drunkenly draped himself over Dex. It’s…nice.

"Try not to fall down the flight of stairs to your rich penthouse," Dex chirps and the spell breaks. A horn honks and the intercom is announcing the next arriving flight, pushing them apart with necessity rather than actual desire to let go.

Derek laughs and tugs on one of Dex’s ears. “Top floor, bro.”

Dex huffs like he does whenever he’s trying not to give Derek the satisfaction of knowing his joke was successful. Still, he counts it as a win, throwing one last grin at his teammate as he shoulders his luggage and steps into the bustle of soon-to-be travelers, ruffling Chowder’s hair as they head toward security.

* * *

It’s a week later, when he’s back in New York and lounging in the kitchen as he waits for his parents to return with tonight's take-out dinner, that he receives Bitty’s text.

It’s a picture.

His own face stares back at him, stubbled and smiling as he wraps an arm around Dex's shoulder. It's probably the most peaceful they've ever been in one another's presence, documented forever more with Dex's hand a phantom presence at the back of his head and under his palm, heads angled towards one another. It's a good photo, making them look like they haven't been at each other's throats since freshman year and that they actually like—

— _oh_.

His first thought is to text Chowder and ask him how he could let Derek go on with his life looking that infatuated. It's embarrassing thinking about how long he's been walking around with his entire heart stitched to his sleeve because wow, they just be letting anybody fall in love, huh.

 _Love_. Derek jerks nearly right out of his seat. Out of all the words in the world at his disposal, his mind had chosen that one; poets greater than him have gone crazy trying to justify their own use of it, writing verse after verse of flowery prose and violent rhymes to quench their starving hearts. Four letters and a thousand and one pronunciations.

 _Him?_ The little voice inside his heads asks incredulously. _Of all people, him?_

 _Who else?_ another, stronger voice affirms and yeah, it’s got him there.

He’s still hunched over the kitchen counter and having a midlife crisis at the ripe age of twenty when his moms return.

"Derek," he hears, coupled with the sound of plastic bags and heels. "Hope you're hungry because we—oh my, honey, are you alright?"

More shuffling and then two pairs of hands are clutching at him, one starting to rub circles on his back and the other pushing his curly hair away from his face. It soothes him almost immediately, the scent of Jean Patou and pad thai, and he lets the finger that sneaks under his jaw tilt his head up. His parents peer down at him in worry, cooing in tandem at whatever they see on his face. 

"Tell us what's wrong, sweets."

Their presence calms him and he sighs; his chest is full with emotions he’s just realized but knowing that they’re there makes the weight of it inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. They have always supported him, through thick and thin, non judgemental when he fell and always with an encouraging smile to help him get back up. It has him sure that even now, amidst new terrain such as this, they’ll understand.

“Mama,” he moans, “I fell for a white boy.”

There's a moment where they just stare at him and he imposes all his woes into the puppy dog eyes he's perfected over the years, lips turning down in a fashion that had all his nannies rushing to give him whatever he had wanted. But it's all for naught because the clock on the wall ticks and suddenly they are smiling. No, not smiling—laughing.

"Oh, sweets, is that all?"

“It’s not funny! It’s—”

Terrifying. Weird. Different. Amazing.

Because he isn't a stranger to liking boys. He's done his fair share of drunk make-outs and flirty hook-ups, has listened to Shitty's lectures on the importance of exploring your sexual orientation in a society stifled with heteronormativity since he was fifteen and has noticed his lack of preference when it comes to gender in potential partners much longer. He liked all types of people.

What is unfamiliar is the way that his heart is beating, off-kilter and jack-rabbit fast. Like he's just stepped off the ice after an intense game, drawing in one gasping breath after another, back to the scoreboard and head buzzing with the adrenaline of a win. It’s the lurch of his world when hands, glove-free and calloused, tug him forward in a hug that takes him higher than he’s ever been before. Frightening and wonderful all at once.

Now he can’t not think about all the little moments, replaying them like a highlight reel. Every chirp on and off the ice. Sharing a booth at Annie’s. Dex laughing after Derek took an embarrassing fall in the quad. The Airport Hug **™**.

His mama makes a small click of the tongue and he knows what she’s going to ask before she does. Rather than delve into the trove of words he always has ready, he brings up the picture on his phone and offers it to her, shoving his face into the crook of his elbow almost immediately after, unwilling to face the world in the moments following his confession. The silence that comes is nearly unbearable.

Eventually, she hums. "The freckles are charming."

"They are," he moans like it's the worst thing to ever happen to him, because it is. "It’s not fair."

Mamãe leans in closer. “Aj, look at those ears. He’s like an elf!" There's the click of a nail against his screen protector and he doesn’t even have to imagine her zooming into the picture, Dex's cute nose and Derek's own dumb love-struck face in high definition for the whole world to see. "You said he likes to use his hands?”

“Yes,” Derek says, hissing out the last consonant. They’re both making it worse, destroying his perfect chill that he spent years creating and perfecting. Hashtag pathetic.

"So," Mama begins and he peers up at her from underneath his bangs. "When do we get to meet him?"

Derek groans and folds his arms over his head. So unchill.

* * *

Stepping inside the Haus before the fall semester is both calming and nerve-wracking. Calming because this is one of his favorite places in the world and he's already decided to make most of his time here while it lasts. Nerve-wracking because of, well, _Dex_.

They’ve kept in touch over the summer, more so than the years before. Usually Derek and Chowder are the ones who keep their Frog chat going (Chowder always with a lot of energy and Derek always with a lot of free time), Dex always busy working for one of his uncles, replying here and there whenever he finds the time or the perfect comeback. But this summer is different. This summer, rather than Derek’s trove of fresh memes left on read, Dex responds. This summer there's personal messages exchanged between them. The insignificant texts that are continuations of the ever classic Roaches vs. Attic debate with futile explanations on why one is superior and _jfc, Nursey, you can't chill with a stranger if they murder you in your sleep_. Dex ranting about what one of his cousins said. Derek explaining why he's in the hellhole of New Jersey visiting his dad instead of with his moms. The late-night discussion on world events and the early morning snapshots of lobster cages and endless ocean. With each message, Derek falls further into a hole he doesn't know if he wants to climb out of. 

They needed to be on their A-game this year to keep up the winning streak. Defense partners worked better if they got along, and to get along, they had to talk and actually like each other. At least that was the excuse Derek gave himself whenever he found himself smiling down at his phone while curled up in bed.

“You head upstairs,” his mama says, breaking him out of his reverie as he stands outside the Haus on his last move-in day. He turns back to the car, watching as Mamãe reaches into the trunk, looking delicate in paint-splattered jeans and a peplum shirt even as she heaves his hockey gear up and over her shoulder. “We’ll get the rest of your things from the rental, sweets.” 

He nods, leaning down when Mama goes on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

The stairs still creak when he makes his way up the stairs to his room and the banister still slides smoothly under his palm, welcoming him back as if he never left. The nostalgia is so real that it even conjures up his fellow d-man in the room they once shared.

Dex is tanner than he was last semester, covered in more freckles than Derek's ever seen, and with hair redder and longer and curling where his ears stick out like he's missed his monthly haircut and _holy shit this isn’t fair_.

He can stay cool, has had an entire summer to come to terms with himself and his newfound crush. He can totally handle another year pining over his d-man, will gladly take a front seat in the friendzone in the name of poets everywhere suffering from unrequited love, can already picture the pages of genius born of it.

“Yo,” he says because everything’s the same as last semester and he’s just as chill. So what if his heart beats faster at the mere thought of the time they'll spend together this year. So what if he wants to reach out and grab his hand, intertwine their fingers and never let go. So what if couplets are already being formed about a plethora of melanin stars, sun-kissed in a way that makes him melt in jealousy for not getting there first. So what.

Dex smiles. “Yo.”

He's gone, gone, _gone_ is so what.

He manages to get a grip on his feelings to finally question what his partner is doing in his room. “What are you doing, dude? Last time I checked, you're still downstairs.”

What it looks like is a small carpenter project in the middle of his room. Derek isn’t a self-taught handyman like Dex, but he knows that whatever is currently being assembled on his floor looks like it took time. What it looks like is a bookshelf.

His first thought is _did he make me a bookshelf?_ His second thought is _he made me a bookshelf._ His third thought is _holy shit, he made me a bookshelf_. But in the second it takes his mind to whip back into reality, he's already shoving these hopeful thoughts down because yes, Dex is making a bookshelf, but no, that doesn't automatically mean it's for Derek. No, that’s not—he’s not—they’re not—no.

“Oh.” Dex’s ears turn red and he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. It's a frustratingly endearing gesture. “It’s for all your books.”

Well, fuck. It is meant for him. Dex made Derek a bookshelf.

“You always go on about not having enough room and leave them all around the Haus—I even found one under my mattress. Some collection by Cammings—”

“Cummings.”

Dex hums. “Just keep it to your own bed.”

“Ha, nice.” Even through his gay panic, Derek can appreciate the chirp, offering a fist bump that's immediately returned. “For real though, you didn’t have to, dude. I could’ve bought one sooner or later. This is literally what IKEA is for.”

“You’re right. I didn’t have to. I _wanted_ to.”

Derek has to rein himself in real quick before he does something damning like gush over the thoughtfulness. “Careful, bro. Soon everyone will know I’m your favorite.”

“Don't worry. Everyone already knows Chowder’s my favorite.”

Derek doesn’t take offense because Chowder’s his favorite too. “Am I allowed in my room or do you need a little more time for yourself?”

Dex’s skin flushes a light pink that Derek is a big fan of—it's the hue of sunsets, budding roses, and crystals. He steps aside to let Derek in. “Oh. Yeah, I’m just about done. Was gonna be out of here before you came, but I didn’t know where you’d want it.”

Derek can't help smiling. "By my desk would be cool."

“Right. Desk.”

He waits for Derek to put his suitcase and bag down and together they manage to move the bookshelf. Derek steps back to look at the room as a whole and it doesn’t look that half bad, definitely more spacious than last year with two people’s worth of stuff crammed together. He should totally get a mini fridge.

Dex doesn’t look like he’s leaving anytime soon and Derek is momentarily conflicted. He can’t deny that he wouldn’t mind if they hung out but… a bro can’t pine in peace with his crush in the same room.

All the chirping and gushing from his moms, and they aren't even here for the moment. It shouldn't take this long to bring in a couple boxes, he thinks to himself, only to hear the laughter ringing from downstairs to tell him all he needs to know; Chowder is 'Bring Home to Mom' material and Derek can imagine the fast-paced way he's chatting it up, spinning two forty year old women right around his finger with the ease that comes from being a boy with braces and a puppy dog personality. Derek's been involuntarily set up, betrayed by his own mothers, one of his best friends used as a prop. A tragedy in the making. Not cool.

"What made you decide to test your mad carpentry skills anyway?" he asks, aiming for casual. He left a lot of his things over the summer, mainly his books all stashed under his bed and piled against the wall next to it. It's time to test out Dex's handiwork. "Is this your way of asserting your captain status? Weird flex, bro."

“No, that's not—I just got to thinking and, um, well, that’s what people do for people they like, right? Give them stuff?”

The books Derek had picked up spill from his grip. Helplessly, he tries and fails to catch them, juggling two for an embarrassing long moment before he fumbles and they go clattering to the floor. It's a pathetic show in front of Dex—especially in front of Dex—but that doesn't matter because _what did he just say_? Derek stares at him, wide-eyed, wondering if he heard it right. 

"Chill, Nursey," Dex says and the asshole has the audacity to be smiling, albeit awkwardly. “It’s just a bookshelf.”

The semester hasn’t even started and already he’s fucked. Derek doesn't know how his life turned into this, being in the same room with his crush talking-but-not-talking about possible feelings—which is mind-blowing in itself because Dex is supposed to fill in that normal-straight-white boy niche in the world. He’s supposed to be a lot of things, but he’s not, hasn’t been a long time, and Derek would like an explanation to when the world unanimously decided to flip and give him a chance at some quality gay love.

His staring must go on for far too long because Dex starts glancing at him intermediately, like he can't stand looking at him longer than necessary, like he's nervous, like he's…

Oh, okay. Maybe this isn't as bad as he thought. 

All at once, his nerves fly out the metaphorical window, leaving him calm and assured. He's not the only one in this predicament and he knows that Dex isn't the type of person to lead someone on, doesn't present anything other than what he's actually feeling, and they might bicker and fight every now and again, but Derek trusts his partner. The feeling must be mutual and Dex is just as interested in what happens next.

Back to his chill self (thank fuck), Derek gathers his books and settles down beside Dex like everything's fine and they haven’t skipped past a coming out story and an almost confession. He knocks their shoulders together for no other reason other than the contact and Dex glances over again, but this time Derek's ready with a smile. After a moment Dex smiles back.

So they fill in his new bookshelf. 

Dex cracks first because he’s always the one who does. "So, are you going to say it or should I?"

"Say what?"

Dex nails him in the shoulder. "You know what."

Derek thinks he might. He manages to squeeze in the last of his books on the bottom shelf of his newly gifted bookcase and leans back to survey the entire thing. It's a perfect fit, but he knew it would be. "You don't hate me."

"I actually don't," Dex says and there's a hint of wonder in his voice that has Derek turning to look at him straight on. "And you don't hate me."

"Nope."

Dex huffs when he doesn’t offer anything more. "You're really not going to say it?"

"I can't be the only one pushing this along, dude."

"What have you done? I’m the one who brought it all up! You should be the one to actually say it!”

“Writers don’t have to do shit. I just have to gaze longingly at my muse and sigh.” To make his point, Derek does just that.

Dex takes it as well as Derek expects, i.e with an excessive, dramatic flair that’s more becoming of a sexually frustrated woman in a Jane Austen novel. It’s almost a delight watching Dex get riled up, crush or no, and Dex always delivers. He sputters and gets redder until he looks like he’s sunburned. “Just say it, Nursey!”

This is one thing in their relationship that Derek is the most in love with, the poking fun of and arguing, but he’s learned that they need to pull back and let each other breathe. Dex will blow a fuse before either of them admit anything, stupid and stubborn and…

"Flip for it?"

He’s eyed warily. "Like our first flip ended so well."

"Are you going to freak out like last time?"

Dex's shoulders hitch up to his ears, still obviously embarrassed. "No," he mutters. He pulls out his wallet and from it, a quarter—no, not a quarter, _the_ quarter, it has to be. Derek and Chowder were right, Dex is definitely superstitious and the bet is theirs. "Heads."

Without further ado, Dex flips the coin in the air. They watch it spin and fall with bated breath. It clatters to the floor, rolling along the wood, and—

"Chill!"

"This can't be happening again."

Derek gets on his hands and knees for a better look. He laughs because, there, stuck in a groove, is the coin. It stands perfectly straight, perpendicular to the floor, a symbol of the decision made between them and the words they have yet to say but know to be true. "Two for two!"

Dex roughly pulls him back and jabs a finger into Derek's chest. "We have to re-flip. You are not getting out of saying it!"

"You know the rules, Sexy Dexy. No re-flips."

"That's for dibs!" Derek snatches the quarter out of the crack before Dex can grab it. The childish gesture is met with another when Dex tries to pry it out of his hand. "Nursey! We're flipping again!"

Their arms get tangled in the following scuffle, each tug and push ushering them closer and closer until they're almost chest to chest, knees bumping as they kneel in the room that they once fought for. It seems like such a long time ago, eons spanning over a few months, changing them with every moment past. It makes what’s to come even more alluring, electrically charged by what it could mean for them—what it could make of them.

"Face it, Poindexter. It's anyone's game."

"You're going to say it," Dex promises, only it kind of sounds like a threat.

Derek pretends to leer. He clutches the coin tighter in his fist. "Make me."

Dex freezes at those words, his grip on Derek's arms tightening. Slowly, like time ceases to exist, he lines their profiles and Derek's so glad that he already went through his own freak out because watching it play out on Dex's face is better than any critically acclaimed film. It’s in high definition too because, from this close, Derek can see the individual freckles splattered on Dex's cheeks. 

Someone needs to give, to say what needs to be said or do what needs to be done. They can't push against one another forever, not if they want to see this through—and Derek wants nothing more than to see it through. It's going to be a hell of a page-turner to see who comes out victorious when they reach the final chapter.

Dex exhales loudly. "So we're really doing this?"

"We're so doing this."

Something light unfurls in his chest when Dex huffs out a short laugh, shaking his head before peering over at Derek through the fan of his eyelashes. It feels like the start of something that's already halfway begun, a steady step toward the future he can't yet picture but wants anyway; wants it even if it all falls apart, putting together the pieces of a story he can call his own, chapter by chapter. But, more than anything, he wants it to work out. By the looks of it, Dex does too.

Derek smiles. 

* * *

He has a really good feeling about this year. 


End file.
